First day of school!

I can't believe it, but the day has arrived - our baby is in school! Today was Eli's first day of preschool! Eli will be going on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday in the afternoons. Today was the  "jump start" day (meaning Mommy and Daddy came for an hour with Eli) and his first day all on his own is tomorrow.

Eli was very very very excited for preschool and literally ran into his room yelling, "yay!" His teacher got a kick out of that and told us that it was nice to see a child excited for school. Eli got his own cool tote bag with a frog on it (ranking high on the list of Eli's preferred animals) and it was also green (Eli's favorite color). So right away he was so happy. Eli drew a picture of himself, filled out a rocket ship with his name, favorite color, favorite food, age, etc. and sat for storytime. And when the teacher asked a question Eli raised his hand, was called on, and answered right away. We were afraid he would be shy, but apparently not - he just jumped in to play, to sit, to answer questions, and when it was time to go to the playground with the para-educator while the parents received more info, Eli just went without even looking back. Don't think he'll miss us! We did have Eli use the bathroom so he was familiar with it, and he thought one of the coolest things was that the sink is outside the bathroom . . . and has it's own little water fountain on the side. Eli likes water fountains so he thought that was the best and talked about that on the way home. :)

Eli's first day of preschool couldn't have gone better! When we got home he told me, "Mommy, I'm really good at this day. This was a great day!" He's super-excited to go back tomorrow and he's going to have a great year!

Taking the obligatory picture by the sign . . .  I'm officially a bulldog now , grrrr!

And this is why she wears her hair up . . .

Cool dude . . .

Playing Playstation with his shades on. What a a cool dude. 'Course, you can't see that he's playing a Disney princess game. :)

Zoo day!

When I was in McDonald's a few weeks ago I spotted a stack of flyers offering buy one adult admission get one child free. A few of the zoos in the area were listed, and since I had never been to Binder Park Zoo in Battle Creek and that was on the list, I thought that we should go (especially since kids admission is normally$10!). My Mom took the day off from work and we headed out on last week Tuesday, before the rain set in for the week and before the twins headed back to school. We had a great day, though in the morning none of the animals wanted to come out and see us. And it seems that the giraffes are all pregnant or just had babies so there are only a few giraffes available to feed. By the time we got to the giraffes they weren't hungry and the zoo wasn't even selling the food since the giraffes wouldn't come over and eat. Still we had an awesome day. Here are some of the highlights:

Tori's not a cowgirl, she's an antgirl!

- Matea was fascinated by all the different animals. When she'd see one she'd get all excited, point, and start yelling at them. Then she'd look at us like, "Did you just see what I saw? There's something over there!" and point and yell until we acknowledged it too. I wasn't sure she was going to like the zoo but she did!

- In the children's area we got to feed baby goats that were pretty aggressive. The minute you held your hand out they snarfed the food and followed you around. The kids weren't sure about that at first, but then were okay. Matea liked them though.

Two seconds after this Eli was running for the exit . . .

The baby goat butting Matea didn't seem to phase her.

-Also in the children's area there was a statue of a cow. When she saw it, Matea got all excited and started going, "moo moo moo." The kids climbed on it and thought that was hilarious! There was also a slide in the children's section, which Matea was quite perturbed she couldn't go down.

Moooo!

Eli's turn down the slide!

We found a baby elephant too.

- There was a tunnel under the rabbit habitat that let you pop up in the middle and then come out the other side. The kids loved going through that, and Matea loved seeing them pop up in the middle. She was completely fascinated!

What do you see, Matea?

It's a Tori in a cage!

- When we saw the ring-tailed Lemur, Lexi said, "Hey, they've got a King Julian!" He's the lemur king from the Madagascar movies. All the other kids around were saying the same thing, which amused me.

- We went to ride the carousel and spotted a painted horse with a Michigan "M" on it and a wolverine on its back. I tried to convince Eli to ride that one, but he told me he wanted to ride the horse with the baseball field on it. I didn't know what he was talking about, but he led me to a horse  . . . that was green and white . . . and had a big "S," that did indeed look a bit like a baseball field, on it. I calmly explained that the horse wasn't a baseball horse, but a Michigan State horse, and Daddy and I went to Michigan (translated: no way was he riding a Michigan State horse!). Once he understand that it wasn't a baseball horse he didn't want to ride it anyway and chose a tiger cub that was next to Tori's Siberian Tiger.

My tiger is fun!

The shunned Michigan horse.

- When we got off the carousel we saw kids in line with THE MOST AMAZING facepaint I had ever seen. The kids immediately wanted it, and even though it was very expensive I decided to spring for it. We had brought our lunch and we weren't going to hit the gift shop so that was their treat. After a little painting we had two fearsome tigers (with glitter) and a beautiful butterfly. The facepaint was TOTALLY worth it - it made the kids day, they looked amazing, and they had fun pretending to be their animals all day long!

I thought I wanted my face painted, but now I'm not so sure.

Our tiny tiger! 

Tori giving me her "pouty tiger" face as she called it.

The prettiest butterfly I've ever seen!

Watch out, the animals escaped!

These animals started a band.

Who knew tigers and butterflies liked ice cream?

We ended up staying the whole day, though Matea was very cranky by the end (she wouldn't nap at all!). On the way home a tiger and a butterfly took a short snooze and Matea conked out. Only the Eli-tiger stayed awake (through sheer determination to NOT take a nap).  We had a great time and I'm already looking forward to visiting Binder Park Zoo next year too!

Sun masks?

The other day the kids couldn't see the tv screen while they were having their Wii time, so they decided they needed to make sun masks to help with the problem (while, craft-lover Lexi decided that and eventually talked Tori and Eli in to it). :)

Lexi (in the back) made a princess cloud mask, with purple and pink pom poms, while Tori had me cut out a basketball jersey for her to decorate as her mask. Eli, our craft agnostic, consented to making a paper with a story on it (a dolphin loving basketball and soccer player meets a lion in the woods), which he then turned in to a mask. Just for the record, his mask needed no glue. Very important, since Eli has declared anything with glue to be a craft, and he "doesn't like crafts."  If I ask if he wants to do a project with me the first thing he asks is, "Is there glue?  Because if there is glue it's a craft and I don't like crafts." Anyway, since it did not use glue, just pre-sticky foam shapes, his mask did not break his craft-tolerance barrier, and we were in the clear. :)

The sun masks worked (or the sun moved so it wasn't shining in the window, one or the other). :) Then the kids made up a whole play with their masks, something about basketball man Darth Vader, and basketball practice man Darth Vader, and the princess cloud . . . can you tell they have an older sibling/cousin who likes Star Wars? :) I couldn't believe a simple mask craft (don't tell Eli) could entertain them for so long!